This week’s Sack load is a big one. So, there’s no time or space to waste-- let’s spill it:
Crawford and Arum and Haymon?
Paul,
Whats up man? Are fans kidding themselves into believing that Top Rank will put Terence Crawford in the ring against one of the PBC welterweights? Are we honestly supposed to believe that Bob is going to do business with Al [Haymon] and allow TC to fight Thurman, Spence, Porter or even Garcia? Or will Bob do what he always does and match TC against in house names and claim that everyone is scared of TC?
-- Nail Rahman
Hey Nail,
You make good points, but there are two things to consider. First, Arum wants to make money and by this time next year Crawford should have already gone through Horn and Pacquiao, Arum’s only two in-house options for “Bud.” Second, Arum and his team are smart enough to know that they have the real deal in Crawford and that he has a good chance of beating any of the PBC welters.
Barring some new Top Rank acquisition or some artifically engineered rematch option against Horn or Pacquiao, Crawford will only make “real” money at 147 by facing one of the PBC guys. Arum likes a buck more than he dislikes Haymon (we saw that with Mayweather-Pacquiao). I honestly feel that he eventually finds a way to get Crawford halfway down the aisle so he can get a big fight against Thurman, Spence, or even Garcia.
Mixed Bag of Grievances
Hey Paul,
You’re a spitfire, spitting truth!
I have never cared for Dougie Fischer, or Steve Kim for that matter, back to their maxboxing and doghouseboxing days.
I’ve had boxing debates with both men over the years and their arguments just don’t stand up. They stopped debating me.
They just parrot the company line, and to me their boxing knowledge is limited.
Fischer will run Ring magazine into the ground, Nat Fleischer will be turning over in his grave.
Fighting is one of the truest forms of human expression, it tells the fighter who they really are
Fighting takes so much out of a fighter, most don’t live that long after retiring. Those who do live long don’t have much of that money they earned fighting to live off of.
For the spectator fighting is just entertainment, for a real fighter, fighting is their life.
Fighters deserve much more then they get, but it was their choice to fight for a living, it is what it is!
To Mr. Fischer’s credit to turn such a brutal endeavor into an entertaining, informative topic via Ring Magazine, I don’t envy the man for the task ahead of him, and I hope he does it well.
That being said, Doug Fischer’s thing is CONTROL, not the free flow of boxing/fight information. And considering the decision before Fischer’s tenure as Editor-in-Chief to put Rhonda Rousey on the cover of Ring Magazine, having called boxing a limited combat art and never having fought a boxing round, I expect more bad decisions to be made.
As an afterthought, I think Floyd Mayweather Jr. fights CM Punk in a UFC fight 2 or 3 weeks before Canelo/GGG II, and then Connor McGregor in August 2018.
Floyd’s rich man shtick is getting old even for him. The life of leisure is boring for him, he doesn’t know what to do for himself other than fight.
-- Robert Jackson
Hey Robert,
The thing with these guys is that I don’t get the feeling that they have much respect for the sport, its athletes, or, for that matter, the fans. They seem more enamored with power trips and pushing their agendas. It’s an ego thing. Yeah, anyone who puts fingers to keyboard has a healthy ego. But when the writer is, first and foremost, about the love of the sport, it shows in their work. And when the writer is playing games and/or just trying to hustle a paycheck, it also shows.
As for Ring Magazine and RingTV, well, it’s frustrating. There was a time when they could’ve done some real good for the sport or, at the very least, could’ve seriously raised the level for boxing writing in general. They had that kind of leverage and power. But they went the other way and sealed the deal on their own irrelevance. Nobody needs another magazine/site dishing news pulled from press releases or delivering puff pieces about some fighter with an aggressive publicist. They could still turn things around and do some real good. But they won’t because they don’t have that kind of leadership at the top and are ultimately bound by their Golden Boy ownership. And even if they did have free reign to shake things up, there is an absolute dearth of energetic, creative straight-shooters in the boxing media and it would be next to impossible to assemble a full staff.
And, yeah, the “look at me” Mayweather routine has gotten old. Maybe he could devote less time to promoting a retired fighter (himself) and more time promoting some of the guys in Mayweather Promotions.
Ring Card Girls: Yay or Nay?
Paul, with the phasing out of pro darts' walk-on girls in the UK, Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren have made it a point to publicly defend the, um, "tradition" and "service" of ring-card girls. I turn to you for a more nuanced take on this than the "Oi, right 'en, Frank" and my own, which is that Warren is disingenuous as all hell when he asks, "Why would you take away someone’s living?" and flat-out stupid when he suggests that if the girls offend, "that is what the on-off button is for."
-- Damon
Damon! Nice to hear from you. (Damon and I go way back to when I was just a trainer posting on the now-defunct Boxing Times message board between sessions.)
Personally, I don’t have an issue with ring card girls. I’m just kind of neutral on the whole thing. From a promoter’s perspective, though, I can see where losing them would feel like losing a stream of revenue. Companies will pay big money for the right to decorate pretty girls with their corporate colors and logo. But, I guess, corporate needs can still be met without titties and tail.
But kudos to Frank Warren for always putting the needs of others ahead of society’s demands.
Spence-Thurman: The New Golovkin-Canelo?
Spence = GGG part 2: Thurman = Canelo (Thanks for answering part 1, btw. We will see if the boxing media treats Spence like they did GGG, assuming the one major difference between the two won't get in the way of that).
Is Keith Thurman being treated fairly by boxing fans for his decision to hold off the anticipated superfight with Spence for a year?
The problem I have with the way boxing fans are treating Keith is that, rather than outright DUCKING Spence, he's giving himself a timeline.
1.) A tune-up in May, which after surgery and a year off is THE VERY LEAST he is allowed (even Errol agrees).
2.) A step-up fight (likely a rematch with Porter or Garcia) at the end of the year, which would certainly better prepare him for a dangerous opponent like Spence than whatever bum journeyman they scrape up from the bottom of the barrel for his tune-up.
3.) AND THEN he will fight Spence early to mid-2019.
I for one, am not going to accuse him of ducking until after his second fight this year. Spence should be next, and if he's not, there's nothing more to say.
The parallels with GGG and Spence continue in that their fanbases seem more interested in seeing their guy win than they are in seeing competitive matchups. Canelo felt like he wasn't ready to be a full-fledged middleweight (think what you will about the legitimacy of this claim, boxing is 80% mental), so he made GGG wait a year. The fight happened on schedule, right when Canelo said. If that fight, involving 2 different promotional companies could happen on time, I don't see why Thurman vs Spence, with the same manager, would be any less likely to happen a year from now.
I wanna see the fight ASAP too, but at least this wait lacks the depressing ambiguity of whether or not either Floyd or Manny would stop ducking either Manny or Floyd respectively.
I can go on and on... But won't.
Thanks for answering
- Gerard Spence (no relation).
Hi Gerard.
I think the issue with Thurman is that he somehow assumed he could get away with talking business out in the open. He’s not Mayweather, he can’t get away with bluntly telling the world that the fights they want won’t be happening anytime soon. Any reasonable person knows that Thurman’s options are precisely those that you laid out in your email. But, as a fighter that everyone wants to see matched against Errol Spence, it wasn’t smart public relations to come out with “I won’t fight him anytime soon because the bout needs to marinate” talk during a Spence fight week.
I can see where you’re coming from with the Spence-Thurman/Golovkin-Canelo comparison. The only difference, though, is that Spence fans won’t be so aggressively spiteful in pursuit of the fight they want for their guy and there probably won’t be as much “my side vs. your side” drama because of that (and because they work under the same Haymon Boxing banner).
My concern is that Thurman might not even make it to a Spence fight and Spence will lose out on a high-profile passing of the torch moment.
Got a question or comment for Magno? The best of the best gets printed right here, every Thursday, in Magno’s Bulging Mail Sack. Send your stuff to: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com